LEES Accentuate the positive

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

By TOM LEESI was thinking last week about the fact that since The Times Herald brought me on board because I write from a liberal/progressive perspective, I spend much of my commentary focusing on what I see as the negative influences in our society. But as the old Johnny Mercer song said “Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.” There is a great Bing Crosby/Andrews Sisters rendition of that song on You Tube, by the way. So before I get back to trying to eliminate what I perceive to be negatives, I think I’ll try to accentuate the positives with a stream-of-consciousness list ala James Joyce. If you’ve never read any James Joyce I would recommend starting with “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and finishing with “Ulysses.” Ulysses is about a man walking through Dublin one day. You would never know that if someone didn’t tell you that ahead of time. This is because of Joyce’s style in which he frequently writes whatever pops into his head.

I’m going to do a list of positives that pop into my head. Most of these, but not all, come from reading the Times Herald sports section religiously since December 1956. Since I live in the Colonial School District my memories are mostly from that area.

St. Matt’s high school basketball was led by coach Ed Givnish back in the day of Ben Kenny’s left-handed outside shooting. I was at the Palestra in 1960 when Bishop Kenrick, led by the Marshall twins (Tommy and Denny), lost the the PCIAA championship by one point to Bishop McCort High School. I remember Don Stemple coaching at St. Gertrude’s in West Conshohocken along with Pat West coaching the girls at P-W with Beth Anders in a starring role. Mr. Mac (Charles McPherson) was coaching everything at St. Pat’s back then, and Pete Vardakas is still active in Plymouth Little League and Jr. ABA basketball after almost 50 years. Gina Buggy came to watch me coach Little League games when she was a little girl, because her late brother Jimmy was my catcher. Gina became an Olympic Field Hockey player and is now the athletic director at Episcopal Academy.

As I’ve taught my students, stream-of-consciousness can be a fun thing. Try it with former Phils players – that’s a blast for long time Phils fans. Start with easy names like Tug McGraw, Steve Carlton, Mike Schmidt, Richie Ashburn, and Robin Roberts. Then go for the more difficult ones like Ben Flowers, Pancho Herrera, Chico Fernadez, Jackie Mayo, Putsy Caballero, Jim Greengrass, Ted Kazanski and Rip Repulski. Try making a list of memories of your own. It’s fun.

Well, I’d could go on “accentuating the positive” forever. But I only have a few hundred words left to mention “eliminating the negatives .”

Last week, I mentioned the deficit is way down since January 2010. An on-line commentator called me a “moron” for mentioning this, in spite of the fact that it’s true. President Obama does get some credit for this because along with other actions he increased taxes on the wealthy, which improved our revenue stream. Also it is important that people distinguish between the deficit (which is going down) and our debt (which is going up). The deficit is in your one year budget. The debt is all the years of budget deficits and surpluses (yes, we’ve had a few – the last one under Bill Clinton) added together. So, if your deficit is one trillion dollars one year and 300 billion the next, your year-to-year deficit is down 700 billion dollars, even though your overall debt has increased.

Only 12 percent of Americans know that the deficit has gone down over the last three and a half years according to a Google Consumer Survey. GOP House Majority leader Eric Cantor thinks it has gone up. GOP Senator Rand Paul thinks it is still at a trillion dollars. They are both part of the 88 percent who don’t know the facts on this issue.

Many of the people I mentioned in the positive memories part of this commentary are still in the area and read the Times Herald. I hope they enjoy seeing their names in print.